Tag Archives: refinery

Grindin’

Officially, I’m on the downhill slide into the end of my work term up north. I passed the midway point yesterday morning, actually, but I’m just seeing some light at the end of the tunnel now. 

It’s been pretty intense to say the least. One guy was told yesterday by the PM to ‘get it done or I’ll find you a bus home.’ So, the pressure is on to get problems resolved… it makes every other work situation I’ve been in look like a fucking bike ride. 

My timesheet this week is going to have 44 hours of overtime on it. While the overtime is good, there isn’t a lot of financial incentive from the company to come up here for a second term. If you’re a professional engineer in this company, you don’t make 1.5x on overtime. I’m not a professional engineer so I’m enjoying the extra boost… but I get paid less to start with so maybe it’s a wash. Whatever. 

I’m just super exhausted, these long days are wearing on me. But I just gotta push through and keep grindin’. 

Carnage

Fire erupted at our client’s refinery almost a couple of weeks ago and, as a result, there was a desperate request for people from our office to go up north and assist. 

Upon arriving, the one week stint changed to a 12-2 shift rotation with me returning for multiple tours of duty. I haven’t given an answer to the return but I probably should today so that they can line up a replacement for me. 

Anyway, it’s 12 hour days with an hour of travel going there and an hour of travel coming back. So that shit is long. as. fuck. I wake up at 5:00 am and I am fighting for consciousness by 9:30 pm. And there is a ridiculous amount of work to do where things are constantly changing as the client discovers more about the condition of their facility after the fire.  It’s pretty intense and high paced. 

I’m still here for another week, flying home Sunday night. And in the next seven days, I have so much crap to do. It’s ridiculous how much there is to do and how little time we have. We are doing in days what would normally take us weeks… figuring out what the bare minimum is that we need to do and still make sure what we are doing is correct and workable. It’s a balancing act that I haven’t quite got figured out yet despite having worked in this industry for almost 20 years. The challenges are also technical things that I’m not used to dealing with so it’s hard to know what to do. 

Here’s hoping I figure it out… and soon.